Clay Shirky Quotes

Comprehension follows perception.

I have been a strong proponent of helping people understand that during the last decade or so, as it lies at the very bottom of how we know anything. Let me give a couple examples to get that point across.

What I care about is maximum information.

Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend

We mistake being able to get lots of information from everywhere very quickly with actually getting knowledge.

I like to read and understand.

I think there's data, and then there's information that comes from data, and then there's knowledge that comes from information. And then, after knowledge, there is wisdom. I am interested in how to get from data to wisdom.

Did they know why they knew? Not at all. But the Knew!

What we do not understand we do not possess.

What a man does not understand, he does not possess.

Whenever we proceed from the known to the unkown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word 'understanding'

We live by information, not by sight.

A phenomenon must be to some extent comprehensible to be perceived at all.

Was not this ... what we spoke of as the great advantage of wisdom -- to know what is known and what is unknown to us?

The nature of our intelligence is such that it is stimulated far less by the will to know than by the will to understand.

What one doesn't understand one doesn't possess.

One cannot come back too often to the question what is knowledge and to the answer knowledge is what one knows.... Knowledge is the thing you know and how can you know more than you do know.

One who knows nothing can understand nothing.

It is vital to remember that information - in the sense of raw data - is not knowledge, that knowledge is not wisdom, and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these.

The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.

There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.

Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.

Knowledge, may it be said, is higher than magic and is more to be sought. It is quite possible to see what is happening and yet not know what is forward, for while seeing is believing, it does not follow that either seeing or believing is knowing.